Journalism 101: Today's Awards for Incisive Comment

HONOURABLE MENTION: THE ALL IS WELL IN IRAQ COMMENT

Marine Captain Giles Clarke writes in The New York Times of running a half-marathon in Baghdad:

As I sprinted across the finish line, though, I knew it was all for a greater good. I knew that I was contributing to something much bigger than myself. How did I know this? I just ran a half-marathon in Baghdad.

Totally Irrelevant Fact (1):

Three bombings targeting Iraqi government employees and the U.S.-fortified Green Zone killed at least 20 people and left scores wounded Monday.

Totally Irrelevant Fact (2):

Number of US military personnel who ran the half-marathon: More than 200
Number of Iraqis who ran the half-marathon: 0

BRONZE MEDAL: I LOVE YOU, YES, I DO COMMENT

David Ignatius gets misty-eyed over Condoleezza Rice in The Washington Post:

Condoleezza Rice may be the most disciplined person in this town of workaholics. She has always been the perfect young woman, pleasing and impressing others.

Dave's Afterthought:

Now the issue of U.S.-Iranian relations will be handed over to the Obama administration. "We ran out of time," says one administration official.

The Question Dave Did Not Ask Condi:

Why?

SILVER MEDAL: THE BETTER LATE THAN NEVER COMMENT

The Washington Post celebrates Presidential justice:

THE BUSH administration acted fairly and responsibly this week in deciding to release Osama bin Laden's former driver from the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and return him to his home country of Yemen.

Suggestion made by The Post:

The White House has another opportunity to do the right thing, this time in the case of 17 Chinese Uighurs held at Guantanamo.

Suggestion not made by The Post:

Anything to do with the other 235 detainees at Camp X-Ray

GOLD MEDAL: THE TRIBUTE TO CONSERVAPEDIA COMMENT

In The Washington Post, George Will joins Conservapedia's vigilant defence against Dangerous Professors, reviewing Stanley Fish's book, Save the World on Your Own Time:

Fish's advocacy of a banal proscription -- of explicit political preaching in classrooms -- may have made him anathema to academia's infantile left. The shrewder left will, however, welcome his book because it denies or defends other politicizations of academia that are less blatant but more prevalent and consequential -- those concerning hiring and curricula.

For those who can't quite make it through that paragraph, here is Conservapedia's translation:

Professor values are currently one of the most prevalent forms of Liberal indoctrination.

The War on Terror: At Least We Caught the Driver

Breaking News that US authorities are going to release Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver, from Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay. A few months ago, he was given a six-year sentence on the charge of "supporting terrorism", but having already been detained for more than five years, he will be allowed to serve out the remaining two months in his native Yemen.

So, after shredding international law and bypassing the US courts to run this facility since 2002, our top felon is the guy who chauffeured Al Qa'eda which meant --- surprise, surprise --- that there were weapons in the boot of the car. With the facade of the military tribunal system collapsing and with US federal judges now ruling that there is no cause for holding some of the almost 300 folks who are still in the Camp, the War on Terror's limbo is now becoming even more apparent.

Good news, however: the detainees are going to be given art lessons and video games to keep them happy and de-radicalised. (I'm presuming that the War on Terror boardgame is not going to be amongst these goodies.)

Will Guantanamo Close?: Canuckistan on Press TV

Canuckistan, who wrote earlier this week about the situation of the detainees at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, was on a Press TV panel to discuss "Guantanamo: Is It Really the End of an Era?" The full programme is available on Press TV's website.

Fact x Importance = News (19 Nov): Camp X-Ray, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan-Pakistan, and Somalia

TORTURE AND CAMP X-RAY: HERE'S ONE FOR THE OBAMA IN-TRAY

The New York Times reports, "Military prosecutors have decided to file new war-crimes charges against" Mohammed al-Qahtani." It continues, "The decision will put additional pressure on the incoming Obama administration to announce whether it will abandon the Bush administration’s military commission system for prosecuting terror suspects."

No kidding. Al-Qahtani may have been dubbed the "20th hijacker" for the media (a tag that has been used for others like Zacarias Moussaoui) but the real headline issue is that he was the poster boy for the "enhanced interrogation" techniques pushed through --- without legal sanction --- by the Bush Administration. The issue of how far to go in questioning him was one of the test cases for the series of Administration memos in 2002 that set aside the Geneva Conventions and tried out methods, authorised by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, such as "prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, exposure to cold, involuntary grooming...[and] requiring him to dance with a male interrogator and to obey dog commands, including 'stay,' 'come' and 'bark'".

A Pentagon inquiry in 2005 found that the techniques were "degrading" and "abusive". Possibly in light of the fear that the case had been compromised by the not-quite-torture approach, the military without explanation dropped charges against al-Qahtani in May 2008.

IRAQ: AL-MALIKI TRIES TO SELL THE STATUS OF FORCES AGREEMENT

Keeping up his part of the bargain with the US Government, the Iraqi Prime Minister made a 12-minute speech in support of the agreement signed on Sunday by his Cabinet.

Perhaps more importantly, Ayatollah Sistani refrained from a full endorsement of the agreement on Tuesday: “Any agreement that doesn’t win national consensus will not be acceptable and will be a reason for more suffering for Iraqis.”

Reports that Iran had privately shifted to support the agreement were not borne out, at least in public, on Tuesday. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said, “We have to wait. Please allow us to make our stance after it is finalized.” The Speaker of the Parliament (and probably Presidential candidate in 2009) Ali Larijani did not wait, however, saying, that the US "was seeking to turn Iraq into one of its states....The Iraqi Parliament should keep on resisting.”

IRAN: POLITICAL AND LEGAL UNCERTAINTIES

A series of stories to ponder from and about Tehran:

The Iranian Parliament confirmed the new Interior Minister, Sadeq Mahsouli, by a 138-112 margin despite questions about his wealth. He replaces Ali Kordan, who was dismissed by the Parliament after the revelations of his faked doctorate from Oxford University.

In Baghdad, US forces have detained an Iranian who they claim is a senior member of the Quds Forces of the Revolutionary Guards. They allege not only that he was smuggling weapons but also carrying cocaine.

Meanwhile, Jahan News is reporting that Hossein Derahkshan, a prominent blogger who also writes for The Guardian of London, has been arrested on charges of spying for Israel.

AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: ALL IS WELL, REALLY

From the Washington Post: "A rise in Taliban attacks along the length of a vital NATO supply route that runs through this border town in the shadow of the Khyber Pass has U.S. officials seeking alternatives, including the prospect of beginning deliveries by a tortuous overland journey from Europe."

Simon Jenkins, who has always been grumpy about the US-UK intervention in Afghanistan since October 2001, is now even grumpier:

The error of Afghanistan is far more serious than the error of Iraq. If the resulting insurgency is now exported to Pakistan, both errors will seem peccadillos. Pakistan is the sixth largest state in the world, and nuclear-armed.
The awful prospect is that Obama and Brown may feel too weak to learn from Iraq and pull back. They will blunder on, not to a clean defeat but to something far worse, a war of attrition whose poison will spread across a subcontinent.

SOMALIA: YOU MIGHT WANT TO TAKE A GLANCE

While everyone is riveted by The Pirate Story off the Somalian coast, Martin Fletcher in The Times of London offers a potent reminder of how the War on Terror has brought further disruption, destruction, and even chaos to the country:

There are several insurgent forces, but one of the most powerful is the Shabab - a group of virulently anti-Western jihadists that has now eclipsed the Islamic Courts movement of which it was once part.

Somalia's nightmare may be only just starting. President Yusuf predicts wholesale slaughter if the Shabab seize Mogadishu. Diplomats fear that the Shabab will wage all-out war with other insurgent forces, including those of the Islamic Courts, for control of the country once Ethiopian troops - the common enemy - are withdrawn.

Fact x Importance = News: The Stories We're Watching

Top Story of the Day: Hillary or Nicolas?

Nope, it's not Senator Clinton, who may or may not be the next Secretary of State.

Nor is it the Global Financial Summit --- yet. Although President Bush welcomed the guests last night, the serious talkin' doesn't start until today. And even then, given the relatively low profile the US will have --- the Bush Administration is almost paralysed, and the Obama folks have chosen to stay in the background --- it will be up to the Europeans to make the running.

No, the surprise headline for this morning is the rocket that French President Nicolas Sarkozy sent to Washington. Or, rather, the US missiles that he is trying to hand back to President Bush.

In talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Sarkozy "joined Russia in condemning the Pentagon's plans to install missile defence bases in central Europe yesterday and backed President Dmitri Medvedev's previously ignored calls for a new pan-European security pact".

The New York Times spectacularly misses the significance, somehow deciding that it lies in "Russia Backs Off on Europe Missile Threat". Russia's feint at putting missiles on its western borders was a political manoeuvre, and to the extent that it has brought Sarkozy away from (or reinforced his existing opposition to) US missile defence, it's worked.

The French President's statement isn't a detachment of Europe from the US. His proposal is that the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe, to which both Russia and the US belong, discuss the security pact next summer.

It is, however, a distancing of France from not only missile defence but the US-preferred attempt to expand NATO's reach. That is going to prompt an immediate tangle between France and governments such as Czechoslovakia, which are still clinging to the US missile defence plan, but I suspect Sarkozy is looking to Germany for backing. And I think --- with a smile --- that will put a marker down for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

All in all, the timing of Sarkozy's announcement should add a bit of political spice to the financial talks in the US today.

Under-noticed Story of the Day: Food rather than Rockets

The sad ritual is again being played out on the Israel-Gaza border. The Israelis have made tank raids across the border, and Palestianian groups have lobbed rockets into southern Israel. The Israelis send out their Government spokesmen and, as few US and British media outlets will speak to a Hamas representative, the narrative of Tel Aviv standing firm against Hamas-backed terror gets another paragraph.

The far-from-insignificant story behind the story is the effects of the Israeli blockade on Gaza. On Wednesday, Juan Cole highlighted a UN report that it is running out of food to distribute in the besieged area. The Washington Post in cautious terms --- "residents are warning of a humanitarian crisis because Israel has sealed the territory's borders" --- has now picked up on this, but it is The Independent of London that highlights the impact:

The Israeli blockade of Gaza has led to a steady rise in chronic malnutrition among the 1.5 million people living in the strip, according to a leaked report from the Red Cross.

Speculation of the Day: Obama and Gitmo

William Glaberson in the New York Times pens the analysis that Barack Obama's "pledge to close the detention center is bringing to the fore thorny questions under consideration by his advisers". Significantly, however, this is no comment from the Obama camp.

Adam Cohen in the NewYork Times has a more substantial development. Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, in my opinion one of the most honourable men in Congress, is not going to let President Obama rest in indecision on issues such as Camp X-Ray, surveillance, and other civil rights issues:

Mr. Feingold has been compiling a list of areas for the next president to focus on, which he intends to present to Mr. Obama. It includes amending the Patriot Act, giving detainees greater legal protections and banning torture, cruelty and degrading treatment. He wants to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to restore limits on domestic spying. And he wants to roll back the Bush administration's dedication to classifying government documents.

Negotiation of the Week: Talks with the Taliban?

As violence escalates in Afghanistan, The Independent of London reported on Thursday: "The Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, will today brief Gordon Brown on talks being held with the Taliban with the aim of ending the conflict in his country."

This is a continuing development. Karzai and the Pakistani Government are now pressing the option of discussions with the "moderate" Taliban. Western governments are not necessarily averse to the idea, with US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates saying it should be considered. However, with the Bush Administration in a no-win position --- it gets no credit if talks eventually succeed under an Obama-led effort and it takes the rap if the discussions collapse before 20 January --- this story will be carried forward by folks outside the US.